CONVERTED PUB, STOCKBRIDGE

INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE

This 19th century property was a coach house, a village pub and eventually two separate houses before we set about restoring it for our own home & design studio.

It’s a long, low building only one room deep and divides naturally at the entrance hall, with the studio on one side and the main living space on the other.

Overall planning and the best sequence of works came first – bearing in mind we would be living and working here for the duration (yes we practice what we preach!).
The first actual works involved moving and replacing the main exterior oil tank, inside boiler and water tank, all to free-up space internally and make use of the attached stable/loft space. We were then able to first fix plumbing/pipes and rewire, working back room by room.

Externally we replaced all the windows in two different styles to define the separate house sections, heights & render/brick finishes. The house side being more traditional. The studio more contemporary. Replaced the guttering with a more architectural zinc version and repainted the render and other joinery details in a fresher colour pallet. The planting & hardscaping are still ongoing.

Internally, rooms have changed their use and we removed a wall to combine two small rooms into one bigger open-plan living/dining area. Other than that, we decided not to make any ‘major’ structural changes and work with the property’s original footprint.

In the kitchen, a window fronting onto the main road has been blocked-up and replaced with a huge mirror, which now reflects the garden opposite and brings the outside in, making the room seem much lighter and bigger. This aspect has been enhanced further by changing the rear window to double doors which also allows direct access to patio. This in turn allowed us to create a new kitchen in a different configuration, improving the overall function & flow. The previous use of the property also gave us the inspiration to look for an old pub bar as the basis of the kitchen. We also managed to squeeze in a small utility/boot room and combine the pantry with a handy wash-up space with sink and drawer style dishwasher.

A small room at the end became the TV snug. Here we created a large false chimney breast that wrapped around the smaller disused fire to create the perfect feature TV wall with concealed storage to the side and space for the amp etc in the old fireplace recess.

See a small selection of ‘before’ & ‘after’ pics of areas recently completed. We will add more pics regarding the interior design to a separate interior folio soon.